The Lanes Are On The Case
by jennyyg
Summary: After leaving UCOS Brian has filled his days with all the normal thing retirement brings but after discovering a box of documents he took whilst in the job, he recruits Esther to help him solve more unsolved cases.
1. Chapter 1

Retirement, proper retirement suited Brian more than anyone thought. although his brain still needed to be churning he was happy to spend most of his days walking Scampi and doing the garden.. Oh and of course cycling around the city parks. Esther had quickly got use to Brian being at home and was grateful for him to actually interact with her about normal thing and not just some sort of horrible crime. It has been 6 months since Brian left UCOS, for a while he thought he would become a private detective but he couldn't find anyone who would hire him, apart from one of Esther's friends who turned out to be a criminal herself.

"Brian!" Esther called from the kitchen up to her husband who was doing something upstairs. After no answer she went up and seeing the ladder extending into the attic sighed and climbed it.  
>"Brian what are you doing?" Ester asked him tiredly, bracing herself for the answer.<br>"Oh hello love" Brian replied with his nose still in a box "I just thought we should get some of Mark's old things down, now he's a dad his old toys can be passed on!" He looked pleased with himself.  
>Esther rolled her eyes, "Anything to get this junk out the house I suppose can only be a good thing" she muttered under her breath, "anyway dinner is on the table and is getting cold!"<br>The pair of them made their way towards the ladder to eat Esters homemade Sheppard's pie when Brian's eye caught sight of a worn cardboard box stuffed at the back of the attic.  
>"Oh my god!" he exclaimed.<br>"What have you found now?" Ester asked  
>"That box! I forgot about it! Ester love, help me take it down stairs."<br>They went down to eat their dinner with the old box on the counter. Brian ate very quickly, Esther made several comments about indigestion but all Brian was interested in was opening that treasure that lay a few meters away.

Once he was finished he put the box on the table and emptied its contents. Ester gave several concerned looks from the sink where she was washing up but after all these years she had learnt that leaving Brian to get on with things was much healthier for them both than interfering. The table was covered in old bits of paper that had a festering smell and were tinged slightly yellow with age. Brian was ruffling though them at great speed and putting them into piles, needless to say the developing piles were very neat.  
>"What are you doing?" Esther asked cautiously in a soft voice although this went unnoticed by her husband.<br>"These Esther, are cases, unsolved cases. When I was in the job years ago I took them. When I was retired, the first time I thought I'd look into them - this was before UCOS even existed. I had totally forgotten about this!"  
>"Is.. Is this legal?" Esther asked worriedly "taking things home like that?"<br>"Well no one missed them" Brian stated "I am going to solve them! With you love, as my sidekick!"  
>"YOU'RE WHAT?!" Esther exclaimed bewildered.<br>"Me and you! We are going to solve these! Well mainly me, but you will be the assistant - very important job!" He grinned, not even acknowledging Esther's scowling face. "You were great on the Annabel Skinner case, but then that was all your fault she came in the first place - but you were great! What do you say?" He looked up at her.  
>"Well, I don't know if it is a good idea" Esther started<br>"Excellent!" Brian interrupted "Let's start with this one" he lifted up a bundle of papers from one of the piles "Jane Shaw, she was killed in 1990 by the canal. Her body floated down until a taxi driver found it at 1.00am in the morning. She was single, lived alone and both her parents had died. She was a loner so there weren't many leads." He skimmed the papers "She was 36 and the cause of death was drowning although she had been hit hard on the head with a blunt object shortly before hand that could have made her unconscious."  
>"And you think we are going to solve this?" Esther asked<br>"Of course! THE LANE'S ARE ON THE CASE!" Brian chanted.  
>Esther saw that she wasn't going to have a choice in this, she just hopped that this obsession would wear off after a few days like they had before.<p> 


	2. Chapter 2

The next day Esther woke to a pillow with no head on. She rubbed her tired eyes and went to put the kettle on where she found her husband. Brian was wearing the same clothes as yesterday and obviously hadn't gone to bed at all. He was sitting on his laptop on a 'find your roots' website which was about tracing your ancestors. Pleased that he had got a new obsession Esther went over to see what had triggered this latest craze.  
>"Oh ancestry! I have always found that interesting, what has spurred this on?" She asked without mentioning last night's escapades or the fact Brian had been up 24 hours.<br>"No Esther, I'm not looking at my ancestors! I thought if I found Jane Shaw's family tree I might find a relative we could talk to!"  
>Esther looked weak and rolled her eyes "don't you think this is all a bit far-fetched? " She asked. "And I'm not sure about all this, you smuggling these documents out of the metropolitan police draws and going through them at your own leisure. I mean it's hardly a bit of light reading is it?! Anyway what makes you think you can solve all this on your own?" She finished.<br>Brian closed his eyes composing himself, he took a deep breath and said "Esther, I told you, the Met hasn't even noticed and they're not going to after all this time! I'm not solving this on my own, you are going to help me! There is nothing stopping a couple of civilians, who stumble across a case, able to solve it!"  
>"We didn't stumble across anything! YOU stole it!" Esther said with annoyance in her voice.<br>Brian didn't reply and Esther knew there was no point in arguing so she went to make breakfast.

Brian stayed on his laptop throughout breakfast and then persuaded Esther to drive to a cousin of Miss Shaw's that he had found on 'trace your roots'. Although Esther didn't approve of all this behaviour she knew that if she refused Brian would go on his own and get into all sorts of trouble. They arrived at a pretty semi-detached house in west London and went to knock on the door. Esther hung behind Brian embarrassed when the door opened.  
>The woman was about 30 with long blonde hair perfectly curled and had bright red lips.<br>"Good morning! Are you Emma Shaw?" Brain asked  
>"Oh urm, yeah I was, but now I'm married it's Emma Price. Can I help you?" The woman looked at the pair of them confused wondering who these two old strangers were asking for her.<br>"Yes, well maybe. You see we are looking into the death of Jane Shaw who I believe was your cousin? Could we ask you a few things?" Brian answered.  
>The woman looked concerned and confused and invited them in.<p>

Her home wasn't huge but it was very neat and tidy. All the walls were magnolia and there were vases of flowers and scented candles all over the place. Both Esther and Brian wrinkled their nose up and sniffed, clearly not liking the smell.  
>"Are you police?" Emma Price asked.<br>Esther looked at Brian who answered "I use to be an officer but I am now retired, I look into these kind of cases for the family, you know trying to give an answer after all this time." Ester frowned at her husband but remained silent.  
>"What if the family don't want to know?" Emma snapped, "Look, I appreciate that you want to help but there isn't really any point so you should try and help someone who needs to know what happened to someone more than me, sorry." Emma Price told them bluntly and showed them out.<p>

"Interesting." Brian said walking to the car.  
>"What is? Look Brian I think we should just leave this, the poor girl clearly doesn't want it all dragged up, especially by two OAP's!" Esther told him<br>"There is something going on, she is hiding something I am sure of it! Right, Esther lets go to the library."  
>The brief visit to this woman unsettled Esther even more, she knew that they were getting involved in something that they shouldn't. Despite her eager urge to drive her husband straight back home and try to forget about it all, she drove him to the London Library where Brian was a member.<p> 


End file.
